News

November 12, 2009

Lunch Turns into $25,000 Keno Win

Sarah Johnson used to think of Schottzie’s Bar & Grill, 11428 Concord Village Ave. in St. Louis, simply as home to “the most wonderful, out-of-this-world pizza.” Now it’s also the place where she won $25,000 playing the Missouri Lottery’s Club Keno game.

The St. Louis woman was having lunch with a friend on Nov. 9 when she matched nine out of 10 spots on her Club Keno ticket. The prize normally would have been $5,000, but Johnson utilized the game’s Bulls-Eye feature – matching an additional bonus number – to turn her prize amount into $25,000.

“I like 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s,” she said, explaining how she decided which 10 numbers to select.

In fact, it was switching to those numbers that led to Johnson’s win.

“I wasn’t having any luck on the numbers I was using,” she said. “So I changed them. I didn’t win on the next three, or the next three, but on the next three, I won $25,000!”

Interestingly, Johnson said she also won $125,000 playing Keno in Las Vegas many years ago playing “almost the same set of numbers.”

Asked how she would use her prize money, she said she “might get a new car.”

To play Club Keno, players choose how many different numbers (also called “spots”) they want to play from 1 to 10. Twenty numbers from a field of 1-80 are chosen in a computerized random Club Keno drawing held every five minutes. To see where Club Keno is available in your area, visit the Retailer Search at Molottery.com and search for Club Games by city or zip code.